Hux stormed into the New Republic provisional armed forces ready room, clutching the flimsy that carried the most complete summation of his transformed personal history. "This is ridiculous!" he told the man on the other side of the holotable, partly obscured by trade routes and star systems. He'd seen him in person only the once, but they'd crossed paths many times. It was Poe Dameron, whose eyes widened comically. Hux snapped at him, "Yes, I'm alive."

"No, I knew that," Dameron said quickly. He looked past Hux, doubtless at Finn, who had escorted Hux to Dameron with many assertions of 'None of this was my idea' and 'You'll have to ask Poe.' At the moment, Finn was leaned against the doorframe, face graced with a highly amused, 'I told you so' expression directed at Dameron.

Hux only looked briefly before turning back. "If you knew that, then why did you fabricate this absurd fantasy about me?" He shook the flimsy furiously.

"It's not absurd," Dameron said. "Hell, it's complimentary."

"It's a farce! It's fake! I did not betray the First Order to save the galaxy's children!"

"You didn't." Poe's voice was deadpan enough that it obviously wasn't a question.

"And you knew it!" Hux threw up his hands and paced, keeping the holotable between himself and Dameron on general principle. It would seem he was free to go where he pleased in the galaxy and bizarre as that seemed, it apparently included marching right into military bases. If you could call this place a military base. The rest of the room was cluttered with half-empty crates and consoles in various states of assembly. A few technicians who had been working on the latter excused themselves from the room, leaving one officer at the only other attended station.

Hux didn't care who heard what. He continued his rant. "You can't convince me you knew so little of me that you thought any of this was true!"

Dameron shrugged, maddeningly unaffected. "Some of it's true."

"Yes." Hux stopped to roll his eyes. "My name is Armitage Hux. That part is true." He went back to pacing and decided to try a different approach. "If you knew I was alive, then why would you write this when it's so easily refuted?"

Dameron lifted one finger in weak objection. "I, uh, didn't know you were alive when I wrote it. I meant … I knew you were alive now."

"But you were surprised when I came in." He didn't put it as a question – just gave the observed data that contradicted Dameron's words.

"I was surprised you came here." Which made Hux wonder if his access was solely due to Finn's escort. Dameron crossed his arms, signaling he was no longer off-guard. "Speaking of which, why are you here?"

Hux looked around the place, his upper lip wrinkling in disgust. It smelled of stale caf and some kind of mold. How had they managed to lose to these people? Oh yes, they'd been destroyed from within by the Sith. He turned to face Dameron, extending both arms to lean on the holotable. "I came to confront the author of these lies. To find out what you thought you were doing co-opting my name and reputation and turning it into this drivel!"

He waved the flimsy demonstratively before smacking it to the holotable. The obstruction blotted out the trade routes to Nar Shaddaa. Hux resisted the impulse to look closer at what hung in the air between them. On one hand, it had to be priceless intelligence, but on the other, he'd come here for an answer and he wasn't about to be distracted from it.

"Uh, well …" Dameron paused as though hoping Hux would offer him an easy out. Hux did not. Dameron cracked a nervous smile. "It's propaganda. You know that, right?"

In a low, level voice, Hux said, "Of course I know that. But why me? Why these particular lies?" He leaned forward further. "I am your perfect villain. Why did you write me as a hero?"

Dameron drew in a slow, deep breath. His gaze went over Hux's shoulder to Finn again. Finn was making quiet choked sounds of stifled laughter. Dameron winced and grumbled, "No one appreciates an artist."

He declined to be distracted. "Why? Why did you, of all people, do this?"

"Listen – it's not all a lie. You know that?"

"No, it is!" Hux straightened and snarled about the most offensive edits to his past. "I did not order Captain Phasma to lower the shields on Starkiller Base! I did not target Palpatine's headquarters on Exegol! You made that up! No one in the First Order would have said I did that!" He was scandalized that anyone in the First Order might believe this stuff. It made him out to be a traitor.

"But you did the bit in the middle, right?" Dameron uncrossed his arms to point at him, looking abruptly pleased with himself.

"What middle? I mentioned two things. There is no middle!"

"When you spied. When you gave information to the New Republic. You did that. I saw it!"

Hux rolled his eyes again. Yes, he supposed the spying had happened between those other two. And he could see how someone would see that as treasonous, even though he hadn't intended it that way (quite the opposite, in fact). He turned to glare at Finn, who dropped his hand to his side and went to attention like anyone would who'd had twenty years of conditioning as a soldier. Finn's lips pressed together tightly, because helmet-wearers had no need of discipline over their facial expressions. "Did you lie to him about what I said to you on the Steadfast?" Hux asked him.

"No, s-." With an angry, disappointed-in-himself wince, Finn stopped himself from 'sir'. "No."

"Did you not tell him?"

"I told him." Finn's eyes went to Dameron. Finn had not been on board with this. He'd said that from the start. There was precisely one guilty party here.

Hux turned back to Dameron, who quickly said, "You told him you needed Kylo Ren to lose. Yeah, I know that. You didn't do it for us. Whatever. But the important part is you gave us the information because you didn't like the direction the Order was going."

"That's not the important part," Hux shook his head as he tried to explain. "I told you what the important part was! I told him!" He gestured back at Finn.

"Yeah, you did." Dameron didn't sound like he believed it, though. "Here's another compliment for you, sharp guy: I thought you were smart enough to know what it meant – if Kylo Ren and by extension the Sith, lose, we all win. At least, all of us who aren't in league with the Sith. You have some standards and I happen to approve of them."

They were enemies! Why did Poe Dameron 'approve' of his standards? And … a compliment? Why would Dameron compliment him? And when had he to start with? Oh yes, the whole 'hero' thing was supposed to be a compliment. Hux bared his teeth slightly, "That's … Fine. There is some inarguable shred of truth there." Dameron raised his brows, grinning in annoyingly smug vindication. "It doesn't matter when all the rest paints me as this heroic figure, misunderstood, tragic, dashing …" Hux squinted at the flimsy and sneered, "'Brilliant'."

"Oh, it didn't hurt that you were easy on the eyes, either." Dameron's voice was briefly husky. Hux stared at him as he realized: Poe Dameron was attracted to him. Dameron had written those things – brilliant, dashing, heroic figure – and thought them complimentary. Going so far as to point out they were intended as compliments. Dameron looked uncertain, thrown by the blank look Hux was giving him. "Has no one ever told you that?"

Probably more wide-eyed than was safe, Hux looked between the flimsy and Dameron. This guy – this person – this general of the Resistance (or what was formerly the Resistance) – thought Hux was attractive. Aside from the fact that no, no one had ever told him that, it changed the whole thing. The entire propaganda piece was fanfiction. No wonder Finn was sniggering in the background. What was he supposed to do about this? Was there a way to use it to his benefit somehow?

Dameron raised his hands, palms toward Hux and making an inexplicable 'go away' or 'back up' motion. "Listen, we had to pick someone, okay? It needed to be someone recognizable inside and outside the Order. Someone who represented the majority – the new generation and not some crusty old imperial. Someone who put a name and a face to the Order itself, as it is today. They had to be relatable. It also needed to be someone with high-level access, high rank, and a reputation we could work with. That's a very limited pool."

"But to what purpose? Just to fill some lewd fantasy of yours?"

"Lewd? What? No!" Dameron softened his voice and continued, "To save the First Order, Hux. To save the galaxy."

Hux shook his head slightly. "Explain."

"Okay, listen. The war's over. You're with me on that, right?"

The guy talked with his hands more than a stormtrooper, but he wasn't saying anything with it Hux could make out. He dismissed the perplexing hand motions. "How could I not be?" He was here, after all, conversing normally enough.

Dameron smiled brightly. "Okay. Now think back a month or two ago, right after the Battle of Exegol. Remember that?"

"When I was locked in a stasis pod, unconscious, unable to remember anything?"

"Yeah, that time," Dameron waved off the sarcasm. "We had hundreds of thousands of First Order members out there in space, some of them still in fully functional warships with planet-killers strapped to them, deployed all over the place, no leadership structure, everyone doing whatever they think best. And because the First Order was almost entirely mobile, there's no base planet or headquarters for us to go threaten and force a surrender from. Got it?"

"I'm following." Hux was now listening with a laser-focused attention.

Dameron swallowed and took a moment order his thoughts. "It's a perfect setup for localized warlords or remnant fleets that might end up replicating the whole thing again – the First Order, again, just ten or twenty years down the line." Dameron shook his head. "However long it would take them to rebuild the fleet and take over the galaxy. It wouldn't even necessarily be you guys." He waved a hand at Hux and vaguely, by extension, Finn.

Dameron went on. "It's whoever manages to attract the loyalty of the most warships. After that, it's falling dominoes as whoever it is sweeps up all the bigger pieces. Because what's left of the First Order doesn't care about the galaxy as a whole. Without leadership, they're not even set on conquering it anymore. They just want to survive. They have no safe harbor. Everyone hates them. This is right after the battle, okay? It's not that way now, but at that point, they thought they'd be tried as criminals, killed or incarcerated, out of a job, desperate, starving, hunted down, the whole shebang – because that's what happened when the Empire fell."

Hux's eyes narrowed and his mouth tightened as he considered the position his people would have been in, post-Battle of Exegol. They would have felt like their backs were against the wall. Like there was no one they could turn to, with all their leaders dead or missing. The older ones had personally experienced the galaxy turning on them after the Battle of Jakku and the younger had grown up hearing about it. Some few were later recruits who found their way to the First Order after years or decades of unrelenting hostility toward former imperials. Everyone knew the score. Apparently, that included Dameron. Then again, he was buddies with Finn.

"I wanted to avoid all that," Dameron explained, bringing his hands together and interlacing his fingers as he spoke. "So I made a story that would bring the galaxy together. I needed one that would tell the First Order guys it was alright. We weren't the monsters you'd been told we were. And they – you guys – aren't the monsters we've been told you are."

Dameron pointed at Finn. "And I know that! We all know that! Anyone – well, just about anyone – who's interacted with you guys knows that. Sure, maybe there's some bad apples, but most of you are just people – people I wanted on our side, people I wanted to bring together, so we're just one side. So Kylo Ren loses. And all of us win. My story had to work for both sides, you see?"

Okay, so maybe it wasn't just fanfiction. Would he let his reputation be contorted into this mockery if it meant his people lived after defeat? It wasn't much of a choice. He looked at the flimsy, then shoved it the rest of the way across the holotable with mixed feelings. A wave of darkness distorted the projected galaxy as it went.

"Why you, huh?" Dameron guessed at the meaning of the action. Hux leaned on the holotable and said nothing. "You said you were the perfect villain, right? That's what I needed. I needed the worst guy in the First Order to be shown as …" Dameron glanced aside, "sensible. Redeemable. Knowing right from wrong. On our side. On the side of the galaxy and all the beings in it."

Hux shook his head slowly, minutely. "That's not me."

Dameron laughed off his denial. "Yeah, okay. Maybe Palpatine was the worst. I'll take you over him any day."

"That's … not a ringing endorsement." But it calmed Hux to realize he only looked good in comparison to undead Sith lords.

"Doesn't have to be. Because I have an even better reason." Dameron leaned forward on the holotable himself, half the Outer Rim projecting on his shirt and lighting his face from below. "Do you remember the part where you saved our lives? My life? Finn's life? Chewbacca's life?"

"The First Order doesn't honor life debts. You owe me nothing."

Dameron shook his head. "It doesn't have anything to do with that. See, I know what you said, but the Resistance would have just named other generals if we'd died. Rey would have still done her thing – she'd have found a way off that ship without us. Everything would have played out the same, except we'd have been dead." With deliberate emphasis, he concluded, "You didn't need us to live for Kylo Ren to lose."

Hux's composure faltered. He blinked faster. He shifted his weight off the table and back to his feet, but kept himself from letting his hands leave the surface. Was Dameron right? Had he actually, accidentally, done something altruistic? But no, he'd killed his own people in the process. An answer came to him quickly: He'd been so frustrated by what the Order was becoming in the hands of Kylo Ren and the Sith that he would and had done whatever he could to lash out at them. "You are imagining nobility when it was actually malice and viciousness," Hux explained. "Just not malice toward you."

"What was it then? Malice toward that stormtrooper you shot? No, I don't buy it." Dameron shook his head again, easily brushing aside what he didn't want to believe. "And the thing is, the galaxy doesn't buy it, either. You made a choice that day and that's what I told them." He pointed at the flimsy in front of him.

Hux straightened. "You don't know the first thing about the choices I've made."

Dameron straightened as well. "You know, you're right about that. Tell me then."

Hux hadn't expected that. Genuine curiosity about himself was foreign. "It's none of your business," he said reflexively. "You have no right to my history, my story, my life, none of it!"

"You want me to take it back? Rescind it?" He gestured at the flimsy. "Tell the galaxy I was wrong and the First Order and everyone in it needs to go?"

Hux spoke between clenched teeth. "No."

"Good. Because I wouldn't do it anyway. But it's nice to know you don't want me to, either." Dameron lifted his chin. "That's what I expected of you, once you knew what the deal was."

Hux's nostrils flared briefly, both angered and oddly thrilled to have lived up to someone's positive expectations. "I haven't told anyone … anything … to contradict your story because I am aware of the value in such information. As of course I have had many persons informing me of such, and how much they would pay, or provide, or perform salacious acts to gain it."

"'Salacious'?" Dameron's brows shot up.

Hux smirked ruefully. "The most interesting was a marriage proposal for political alliance. You see, as the last living member of the High Command, I have inherited access to all accounts the First Order held, and due to your efforts at rehabilitating the image of the Order, most of them haven't even been confiscated. Those ships which have come out of hiding, and those which have not, are technically under my command."

"Uh … Yeah. That's … that's something." Dameron swallowed nervously. Clearly, he hadn't considered the power Hux still wielded, mostly as a result of Dameron's own polishing of Hux's reputation. As one of the leaders of what passed for the New Republic's military, he really should have. But then again, he'd thought Hux was dead. "What are you going to do with all that?"

"You're wrong to think it would take ten or twenty years to take over the galaxy," Hux mused. "I could do it in one."

Several things flashed across Dameron's face in quick succession – fear, regret, consternation, and then puzzlement. Finn made an uneasy noise behind him. The officer at the workstation turned to watch them with the sort of open concern that would have a First Order officer reprimanded. Dameron stayed focused on Hux. He raised one finger. "Are you threatening me? Are you threatening … the whole galaxy?" He sounded more perplexed than defensive.

Hux shrugged indifferently. He hadn't intended it as a threat – more just an observation. He could do it, sure, and it was the obvious thing to do. But did he want to? What would he be when it was all over? He thought about the vision he'd had while in stasis. As far as he knew, everyone he'd ever known in any personal capacity was dead. The Finalizer was as of yet unaccounted for. He supposed he could go looking for her once this was dealt with.

Dameron wasn't a mind-reader. He put his hands on the holotable and leaned forward, eyes narrowing as he regarded Hux. "People only issue threats when they don't intend to carry through with them. Otherwise, they'd just do it." Hux scoffed, though it was true enough. Dameron said, "You want something. What is it?"

Hux snorted again. What he wanted wasn't something a person could simply hand out to whoever came asking. But there was a thing he needed, even and maybe especially if he was walking away from the path of war. He sighed. "I need an agent."

"An agent?"

"Yes. You. And you need me as your client. If you want your story to remain effective, then you need to manage it, including making sure my version of events matches with the image you've created. It's not a characterization that will come naturally to me."

"Huh. Yeah. Hm." Dameron looked distracted.

Hux's shrug was calculated this time. "Or don't. I'm sure I'll think of something to tell them."

He had Dameron's attention again. "Don't get ahead of yourself there, Hugs. I didn't say no. In fact, I think I'm going to say yes. Let's go grab something to eat and talk over the details."

"Say yes, now, without conditions. I'm not going to be strung along by someone who calls me names and is known for wasting my time."

"Wasting your time?" Dameron pitched his voice up in false outrage. "I'm hurt!"

"Not as badly as you need to be."

"Oh!" Dameron grinned at that. He held up one hand, waving it slightly like there was something he badly wanted to say, but didn't. Maybe he just couldn't bring the right words to mind, but he looked pleased instead of frustrated. Instead, he morphed it into a weird little gesture indicating the both of them. "We're still going to eat dinner together, right?"

Hux wasn't sure what the meal had to do with anything. It sounded like Dameron trying to save face by getting a concession. Even though it was technically a condition, it was one Hux was willing to grant. "Yes, fine."

"Okay then. Yes." Dameron was still far too pleased with himself. "Funny thing, you could be out there making a play for ruling the galaxy, but here you are talking to me instead." He wagged a finger in Hux's direction as his smile broadened. "I knew there was something about you."